


The ABCs of McLennon

by Lynzee005



Category: McLennon - Fandom, The Beatles (Band)
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, NSFW, One Shot Collection, cum, now rated m, was rated T, writing prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2020-10-19 13:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynzee005/pseuds/Lynzee005
Summary: A one-shot collection based on anA to Z Headcanon Gamepost I stumbled across on Tumblr. Each letter is a separate one-shot. Not all stories will be related to one another; they may not even be in the same universe. I don't know where this will go yet. I hope you'll stick along for the ride all the same!





	1. A is for Aftercare

**Author's Note:**

> Aftercare: [the time you and your partner take after play time to recover and also to see to each other’s emotional and physical needs.](https://www.lelo.com/blog/bdsm-beginners-aftercare/)
> 
> Ok so this was sort of an after- and before-care story, I guess...lol

_ Ssshhk! _ A struck match blazed to life between John’s fingers, sending a glowing wash up the wall beside the bed. Lowering his hand, he lit a candle on the bedside table; the flame dimmed briefly before it caught and grew, in both brightness and intensity, until the entire bedside was bathed in warm light. Then John flicked his wrist, trained from years of rock and roll strumming, to extinguish the match. The acrid smoke filled Paul’s nostrils, burning his throat, but he loved it. He had no idea where John had gotten the candle from, or why he wanted to light it now, in this moment, but none of it really mattered. He shut his eyes and smiled, wildly content.

“White peony,” John muttered, flicking his middle finger nail at the glass jar in which the scented candle sat. “Not sure what the difference is between white and pink peony, though. Or yellow, for that matter. But nevertheless…”

“It’ll smell like a proper English garden in no time,” Paul replied, inhaling deeply, past the last dregs of sulfur lingering in the air. He caught the first overly perfumed notes drifted over from the slowly heating pool of wax surrounding the candle’s wick. “Or a close approximation, anyway.”

John sat on the bed. “I thought you’d like that,” he said, his voice low, deep. He brushed a damp strand of hair off of Paul’s forehead. “Make it smell a bit like yer Da’s garden back home, eh?”

_ Home _, Paul thought with a sigh. “Yeah,” he nodded against the hotel pillow beneath his head. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

John continued his soft strokes against Paul’s face. “Want a drink?”

“Scotch, if you’re offerin’.”

“Yes sir, right away sir,” John said, putting on a voice that made Paul smile as he he pushed himself up off the bed and walked to the door to the bedroom, careful to avoid spilling too much light from the living room into the soft dark within. The in-room wet bar was fully stocked, as had been requested, and he listened to the soothing, domestic sounds of glasses clinking and bottles being rearranged as John fixed them a couple of drinks. Paul was still getting used to having everything available at all times, and it was in moments like this that he was quietly grateful for their fame; he couldn’t _ imagine _ having to get dressed, make himself presentable before traipsing down to the bar in the lobby or, even worse, some nearby pub. No, there was only one person Paul could stand to be around right now, and it was John; he didn’t need to put on airs with John. He didn’t have to hide himself with John. 

Especially not after… 

Paul almost giggled to himself as he snuggled down into the the feather softness of the bed, remembering how they’d made such a terrific mess of it, with pillows strewn about and blankets everywhere. So new, all this; no need to hurry up and clean up because of shared accommodations, like in Hamburg, and no need to shimmy down a drainpipe or sneak out the garden door because Younger Brother or Stern Auntie was coming up the walkway. They had a reason to be there and a door that locked and a whole night ahead of them with no one to interrupt. 

It was almost too good to be true. Paul closed his eyes, deeply sated, and felt heavy drowsiness settle into his limbs, weighing him down, pulling him towards the edge of sleep.

John returned to Paul’s side and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Let’s get you up.”

“Hm?” 

John clucked his tongue. “I want to remake the bed,” he said.

Paul furrowed his brow. “Whatever for?”

“So we can sleep,” was the answer. “Or so you can, anyroad. I know you need the sheets tucked in or you get right stroppy, kickin’ them long legs all night long, and then neither one of us’ll get any sleep and Eppy’ll be on our backs tomorrow.”

Paul groaned and dragged his eyelids open. “Eah, that's for us to worry about tomorrow. Just come to bed..."

John poked Paul in the ribs. “Don’t make me carry yeh.”

“Like you could," Paul dared.

He wasn’t expecting him to hoist himself up again, or slide his arms beneath his knees and under his shoulder blades; Paul squirmed and laughed in protest as the down comforter covering him fell sideways, exposing him to the dry chill of the hotel room, with its malfunctioning air conditioner hovering in the mid-teens. 

“Alright! Uncle!” Paul shivered. “Christ…”

“Well—”

John smirked. Paul thought he looked so handsome by candlelight. Everyone did, he reckoned—Paul knew that much from years of living with amateur photographer Mike McCartney in the next room—but he also figured that John looked _ especially _good. The angles of his face cast in flickering relief, their lines softened. It reminded Paul of the biblical paintings lining the walls of his childhood church. John had always reminded him of a Renaissance portrait, even under harsh stage lighting, but here in the candlelight…

“Come on, then,” John urged, and Paul pushed himself up to sitting. As the blankets fell away, Paul shivered again. He reached for something, _ anything _, to cover himself with, now that his cocoon was gone; it was John’s shirt—discarded in the heat of the moment an hour earlier, balled up at the foot of the bed and now held in John’s outstretched hand—that he grabbed hold of. 

“As much as I’d like to keep lookin’ at yeh…” John said as he scrunched the hem of the shirt and fit it slowly, carefully over Paul’s head. Paul loved wearing John’s shirts. He loved the feeling of his biceps stretching the fabric where John’s slightly narrower shoulders normally fit; he liked finding wiry auburn hair clinging to the collar. But most of all he loved the fact that it smelled like John. Not his aftershave or anything like that, although there was that too. It was something else, altogether undefined, _ undefinable _ even. 

_ Like home. _

Home could be the scent of flowers in a garden, yes. But it was more than that, Paul knew. Home could be anywhere. It could even be a hundred and fifty square feet behind a closed door in an upper floor hotel room, wearing _ his _ shirt, if he wanted.

Which he did.

So he breathed beneath the fabric and stood up, ignoring the delicious aches in his body, and placated John, shuffling over tightly coiled berber and dropping his body into the double-wide armchair beside the window. John followed, a highball glass in one hand, a blanket in the other. He set the glass down and tossed the blanket over Paul, who pulled his legs beneath him on the cushion. Then Paul took a generous gulp of the scotch-and-Coke, strong and biting in his mouth, and swallowed it down as John moved around the bed, tossing pillows back to the head and pushing sheets and blankets under the foot. It was messy and hasty, not nearly as nice as the hotel staff would do, but Paul _ did _like to have the sheets tucked in, and it warmed him to think that John remembered that.

“C’mere,” Paul said softly when John was just about done.

“You need something?”

Paul shook his head. “Just… come over here.”

John did as he was told, and when he was close enough to touch, Paul reached out for his hand. Bringing him to his lips, he kissed each knuckle before gently tugging his arm, pulling him closer, until John had no choice but to join Paul on the chair. He sat awkwardly, half in Paul’s lap, half on the cushion.

“Fuck’s sake, Paul,” John protested. “I’ll break yer legs.”

Paul just ignored him, wrapping his arm around John’s middle to hold him steady, and eventually John found a comfortable position. The fidgeting ceased. John relaxed. 

“Why are you so good to me?”

John didn’t say anything for a while. “I could ask the same of you.”

“But I don’t go waiting on you hand-and-foot afterwards,” Paul said, turning to look at John. Still half-cast in the glow of that flickering candle, half-cast in the pale moonlight streaming in through the part in the curtains, Paul thought him the most beautiful sight in the world. “Come to think of it, I mean… what’s _with_ the seduction-after-the-fact thing anyway, hm? You know I’m a sure thing, John. You’ve already had me!-

Paul watched as John’s face fell a little. “Just wanting to make you comfortable is all. Make sure you enjoy it…”

“Are you worried I wouldn’t?” _What was there not to enjoy? _Paul thought, face alight as he remembered with deep-seated pleasure just _how _enjoyable it all really was.

“Dunno,” John said, wrinkling his nose. “Figure you’d come to yer senses sooner or later and my luck’d run out. Wouldn’t want to tempt fate, you know.”

Paul cocked his head to the side. “You think that’s all this is?” he asked. “That this is just some _ fling _ ?” _A fling that's been going on for how many years now? How many times have we been here? How many times have we done this? And you still think it's a passing fling?_

John could barely look at Paul. “Isn’t it?”

Paul pressed his hand flat against John’s hip, flexing his fingers into his side as he measured his response. Words failed him, but he knew even if he could find the right ones they’d never do justice to how he felt. 

He’d have to show him.

So Paul stood up, legs shaking from cold and prior exertion and adrenaline as he wriggled out from under John and then, upon gaining his feet, turned to pull him up too. Then he kissed the scotch off his lips and the breath from his lungs, and felt John’s stiff hesitation melt away. He molded to Paul’s body, and Paul to his, and the only sounds in that half-lit privacy of their little room were the ones they made, wet and heavy and desirous.

All of a sudden, the air conditioning unit rattled to life beneath the window, shattering the stillness. Paul barked a laugh as the frigid breeze from the louvered vents began blowing, tickling the hairs on his thighs and stealing the heat from his bare erection. He raced to his side of the bed and threw back the covers, diving in beneath them.

John, still standing at the foot of the bed, made a face. “‘Ey!” John protested. “I just straightened it all out!” 

Paul was already seeking the deep warmth he’d left behind, but was more determined now than ever to take John with him. He pushed the blanket back and pulled John towards him; John fell to the mattress, giving up the fight. With no small amount of maneuvering, Paul finally got the covers over them both; he found himself straddling John in the process.

John’s eyes twinkled in the candlelight; Paul smiled and lifted a finger to comb an unruly patch of hair away from John's eyes.

“I don’t really care about the blankets, John,” he said as he descended. "Do you?"


	2. B is for Body Part

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Body Part: (anatomy) Any part of an animal organism, such as an organ, limb or extremity.
> 
> Takes a while to get to the prompt, but...get there, we do.

“We’re gonna get in so much shit for this…”

John just smiled and reefed back on the oars of the dinghy, propelling them several feet through the crystal clear Aegean waters away from their hired yacht. “_That’s _ what makes it fun,” he said.

Paul leaned back against the back of the small boat, resting his elbows on the edge. “What if something happens to us, hm? No one knows we’re out here.” Paul lifted his thumb to his mouth and worried a loose hangnail between his incisors. “What if you get attacked by a shark?”

At that, John had to laugh. “There aren’t any sharks in the Mediterranean, Macca.”

“‘Course there are,” Paul muttered. “That’s a myth.”

John peered over the edge, where the water was starting to get shallow; one more pull on the oars and they drifted up against the sand. “I think the thing you’ve got to watch for are the sea urchins,” John drawled as he swung his legs up and over the edge of the boat, grabbing the rope to pull the dinghy ashore as he moved. “So watch your step.”

He heard Paul grumbling behind him as he began to drag the boat up and onto the beach in the little cove he and Paul had discovered that afternoon during their visit ashore. They hadn’t needed to make any formal declaration of their desire to return; it was silently agreed between the two of them that they would. Paul, apparently, hadn't expected John to make a move so soon.

But move he had, waking Paul from a light drowse and spiriting them both away to the upper deck, away from the rest of their entourage. They'd made off with the small wooden lifeboat, pointed toward the shoreline, and started rowing.

The cove was beautiful. White sand, dotted here and there with jutting and jagged lava rock, delineated the beach from the seashore. On three sides the cove was surrounded by pale curved rock cliffs, starting low on the right and gently sloping up to the left, like a section of spiral staircase. Lit up as it was by the sparkling silver moonlight, it seemed like something out of a dream, a painting and not reality. It was private, and it was _theirs_ for as long as they wanted.

John stopped and turned back to look at Paul, who was pushing the dinghy up the shallow slope of the beach. 

“What is it?” he asked.

John dropped the rope as he walked to the stern, not stopping until he’d stood himself directly in front of Paul; there, he caught the younger man, slinging his arms around his waist, and kissed him.

“Fancy a swim?” John asked against Paul’s mouth.

Paul smiled; John could feel it. “I didn’t bring my trunks.”

But John already had his own shirt untucked and was working on his waistband. “Suits me just fine,” he said as he swiftly stripped, leaving his clothes in a pile in the dinghy and running full bore into the water, naked as the day he was born.

When Paul caught up to him, he was treading water, neck deep, about six meters out from shore, where the sand began to pitch away more sharply into the open water beyond. With his long limbs, Paul made quick work of the distance between them, and as he swam up to John, he brought those long legs and arms around John, wrapping him like a gift. Intimately pressed together, surrounded by the warm salt water and completely and totally hidden from view, Paul was suddenly bold. He leaned down and kissed John, rough and hard. John hungrily accepted the forwardness of his partner as he tongued the back of his teeth and ground his desire against him as they floated there, buoyed by the salt water around them.

“Is that what we came here for?” John asked in a break from the onslaught. “A private fuck?”

"You tell me. This was your idea..." Paul dipped his head to John’s neck and kissed and licked a line from the base of his ear to his collarbone. “But I can’t have you the way I want you in a berth with a dozen other people sleeping around us, can I?”

John felt himself twitch in anticipation, his own erection hard and attentive, resting against the underside of Paul’s bum as the bassist pulled himself up in John’s lap. It _ had _ been a long time since they’d touched each other, John thought; _ of course _ he knew that this is what they’d be doing here on this beach. 

He wouldn’t have had it any other way.

He grinned. Reaching his hand between them, John encircled Paul and began to pump his hand, and the younger man let out a rumbling groan against John’s neck. 

“And what makes you think this is so private?” John asked as he twisted his hand, pulling up, plunging down. 

Paul groaned again, louder this time. “Because everyone on this island is asleep and the nearest house is—”

John squeezed his fingers, fluidly and wave-like, as if he were milking him, and Paul let out yet another loud, deep moan. “I love it when you’re loud,” John said.

Paul grinned, pulling back and looking down into the water to watch as John worked him, and he furrowed his brow, deeply desirous, as John pulled from the base to the tip and then back down again. “Ffffuck,” he said.

“Louder.”

Paul looked up at him, eyes gleaming. He took a breath and leaned his head back, shouting to the heavens. “_ Fffffffuck!” _

The sound echoed off the gleaming white cliffs that surrounded the cove, but when it bounced back to them it brought along with it the sound of a dog barking. Then a man’s voice. Paul gasped and swung his legs down, barely touching the sandy bottom, utterly forgetting his desire. 

“Christ!” he said.

John laughed. “I guess you were wrong, son.”

“What the fuck, John? What’ll we do?”

John shrugged. “Head back to the dinghy, I suppose?”

Paul was frantic, and John thought it all hilarious; he watched as Paul scrambled through the water, splashing and thrashing on his way to the dinghy. The sound of the dog barking sounded closer; John scanned the tops of the cliffs nearby for signs of villagers, patrols, but without his glasses he was next to useless.

“Hurry up, John,” Paul urged. 

John continued his leisurely pace, picking up his feet and swimming a few lengths to cover more ground faster than Paul, who was still trying to walk. He caught up, and the two of them swam up to the shore. As Paul pushed himself up and out of the water and John moved to join him, his hand brushed an outcrop of lava rock beneath him. Startled, he gripped the rock instead. 

Pain shot through his hand and up his arm. He yelped and pulled his hand out of the water. “Fuckin’ hell!”

“What is it?”

John gritted his teeth and squinted. In the pale light, he could see very little, but he didn’t need to see to know what had happened. “Yer never gonna guess,” he muttered through the pain.

The dog continued to bark, and it seemed like it should have appeared already, or would do very soon. But John could scarcely hear it over his own heartbeat thudding in his ears as Paul approached from the shoreline and gently took his hand. He sucked his teeth and made a face. 

“Sea urchin,” he said. “Three spines. Big ones too.”

“Jinxed meself.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No, it’s quite a nice feeling, actually.”

Paul made a disapproving noise and held John’s hand. “Hold still, eh?” he said. The warm Grecian summer air swirled around them as they stood, naked and dripping, in ankle deep water; John’s left hand was in Paul’s. Paul was steady as he’d ever been as he lowered his head, pinched the first of the three spines, and slowly, carefully, pulled it out of John’s finger. “Came out clean.”

“Careful. They break easily.”

“I know,” Paul said as he reached for the second. That one, too, came out clean and unbroken. John winced and took in a deep breath as Paul gripped the third and once again, slowly and gently, pulled it free from his finger. “There,” he said, tossing the third spine to the water. “Feel better?”

He wiggled his finger. “Stings a bit.”

Paul still held John’s hand in his, the back of John’s resting in Paul’s palm. He gently lifted his hand to his lips and kissed the fingertip where the spines had been stuck. “Does that help?”

John grinned and shrugged. “Not really.”

So Paul descended once again, taking John’s index finger this time, drawing it up into his mouth. His tongue swirled around the knuckle, sucking it deep, and John felt his knees go weak.

“How about now?” Paul said as he released the finger.

“Uh huh…”

Paul just grinned. “You know, of all the parts that make up John Lennon… that’s my favourite.”

“My finger?”

“Your _hands_,” he said. “Your hands are just… well they’re strong. They’re dextrous. You can do so much with them.”

“I do _you_ with them.”

“Among other things…” Paul sighed. “Your hands are beautiful. I think they’re my favourite.”

John took a careful step forward and brought his uninjured hand up to Paul’s face. “And I love yer nose, Paulie,” he said. 

“My what?”

“You’ve got a startlingly attractive profile," John said, matter-of-factly. "And it’s all in the nose.”

Paul threw his head back and laughed. “Well that’s one I’ve never heard before.”

John reached his hand over and cupped Paul’s bare backside. By this point, the barking dog had faded away; their unbidden would-be audience had disappeared. It was John's turn to feel bold.

“Sounds like Zeus Papadopoulos the night watchman is gone,” he teased, cocking his head to the side. “You sure my hands are your favourite body part?”

Paul got the picture; his eyes sparkled like the moonlight on the water as he coaxed John to readiness and slowly dropped to his knees in the soft, wet sand, then took John fully and completely within his mouth.


	3. C is for . . .

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cum: variant spelling of verbnoun ‘come’: [semen ejaculated at an orgasm.](https://www.google.com/search?q=cum&rlz=1CDGOYI_enCA750CA750&oq=cum&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.977j0j4&hl=en-GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#dobs=come)

“Brigitte Bardot…”

From the other side of the darkened room, Paul heard John mutter something under his breath. His voice trailed off, disappearing like candy floss in water into the space between them, until the only sounds left were those of soft movements, the occasional  _ hiss  _ on a sharp intake of breath, flesh on flesh moving in the dark.

Paul had never been overly comfortable with group masturbation; this was John’s idea, John and his friends, his artsy friends, the ones who probably did this on such a regular basis that they incorporated it into their bloody art. Now  _ that  _ was a thought. Paul imagined one of them collecting ejaculate in glass paint jars, mixing it with powdered tempera or pure pigment and slapping it up on a canvas, just to make a statement. They’d call it something like “Bawdy Art” or “Original Sin” or something, with some kind of pun, but a cleverer one than that. They were always being so  _ bloody _ clever… 

Paul didn’t like doing this. He never finished; he just pretended to, faking orgasm after orgasm and always quick to tuck himself away, if he’d even ever taken himself out to begin with—it was always so dark in these rooms where they did it and no one could ever see anyway. It wasn’t because he felt bad about it, not anymore. He’d long ago left the shameful lessons from Sunday Catechism behind, had gotten over the blushing embarrassment that came with morning-after-wet-dream breakfasts when he couldn’t look his mother in the eye. He’d made it with girls, plenty of them. Pretty girls. Girls with tight sweaters stretched over their more-than-ample bosoms. Girls with their knees peeking out beneath the hems of their skirts, above the elasticized cuffs of their stockings. Girls with long hair and short fringes and bows and barrettes holding everything in place as they bunked off from the girls’ school down the road. Girls who giggled their secrets into the palms of their hands, palms that Paul was so desperate to touch.

He wasn’t ashamed of sex, with a partner or onanistically. He _craved _this, the feeling of release. That delicious moment when the world was still slightly off-axis and his heart was still a freight train in his chest. He _wanted _it. He just didn’t want to do it with the boys from the art college with paint under their fingernails, smelling of turpentine, shouting out the names of French New Wave actresses and German existentialist thinkers and models and singers that Paul didn’t know and couldn’t picture so they didn’t help him get there. That wasn’t something he found appealing, not at all.

He just wanted to do it with John.

So when a lazy afternoon turned into a lazy evening and Gambier Terrace was bathed in the blue-grey glow of just-past-twilight and none of the regular cast of characters had yet to arrive from their nightly tour of the pubs in the area in search of cheap beer and cheaper women to satisfy their cravings… when an antsy John pulled the shade in the window and settled into the chair… when he started unbuttoning his trousers, when he motioned for Paul to do the same, well… Paul did. 

Gladly.

The exhilaration was almost more than he could bear; his heart was in his throat and his stomach burned, with pangs of hunger from not eating but also of a different kind, too. He came up hard without needing to try, and it didn’t take long before he was joining John—John, whose slouched silhouette stayed directly in Paul’s line of vision the entire time, backlit by the soft light seeping in around the edge of the blind, catching and lengthening his movements in the half-light until he was barely more than a soft-edged blur across the room—in the act. 

Paul swallowed, his mouth dry. He took himself from base to tip and back again, first with his eyes closed and then with them open, watching John do the same from five feet away. Their feet were practically touching. In fact, if Paul slid his foot over an inch to the left and two inches forward… if he reached his toe out just a bit… if he could juuust… 

Paul’s heel slipped on the carpet beneath him and collided with John’s. He laughed nervously.

“Playin’ footsies, are we?”

John’s murky voice caught in his throat as he forced it out. He sounded nervous; but maybe that was Paul projecting.  _ Paul  _ was nervous. His foot still sat, frozen, beside John’s, pinky to pinky. Moving it now would be an admission of discomfort, an acknowledgment that it was  _ weird  _ to be touching your friend in any capacity while the two of you had it off. And yet, as he wriggled his baby toe against John’s, Paul’s hand, unmoving around himself, began to slide up and down once again. John, almost unbelievably, wriggled his toes in response. 

“Jayne Mansfield,” he whispered.

Paul tried to close his eyes but he couldn’t. He just wanted to look at John, whose face was cast in half-shadows enough to obscure the detail but enough light to see that his mouth was slack and that he, too, was watching Paul.

Again, Paul swallowed. “Anita Ekberg”

John’s hand was moving more quickly, his breath coming out in short gasps. Paul recognized the sound; he’d heard it more than enough to recognize it as the sounds of John nearly at the edge. Paul picked up his own pace on account, closing his eyes and turning his face away.

“Gina Lollobrigida,” was John’s reply.

Paul furrowed his brow, losing his nerve and his desire; he preferred blondes. “Mmm, Marilyn Monroe.”

“Diana Dors…”

_ That’s better _ . Paul felt the build-up coming on strong. He wanted to give something back to John now, something to get him over the edge. A dark beauty, someone unique, someone with a sensual foreign accent.

“Sofia Loren,” he said.

“Paul—”

Paul’s eyes snapped open at the sound of his own name, and he watched as John hit his climax and came, fast and hard, shooting all over his hand, glistening in the shaft of narrow moonlight slanting in from the side. John convulsed, twitching as the last few drops spilled out and over his fingers; Paul took one more stroke and made it himself, uttering a low moan as he did the same, emptying himself over his closed fist and the inside of his trousers.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. There was heat in Paul’s cheeks, flaming from his jaw to his hairline; his hand was cold, sticky, getting itchy as it dried on his skin. But he didn’t want to get up to wash up; not until John went first, which he did, a few moments later. Paul followed, a discreet distance behind, and cleaned up at the sink with the same washcloth John had used on himself. 

Paul didn’t mind that so much. 

_ “Paul—”  _ on the other hand… 

He’d said his name, hadn’t he? He hadn’t imagined that? 

The water was cold but did the trick, and it revived what little strength Paul had left in his legs, which wobbled under the weight of him. He shut the water off to find John wandering into the small space that served as his bedroom on the nights he stayed at the little communal hovel. John always fell asleep right after finishing; if he was being honest, that’s all Paul wanted to do to, but there wasn’t really a place to sleep and now it  _ was _ awkward, as it always was when they finished; this time, so different because it was just the two of them, was actually no different than all the other times. Shame, that familiar old post-orgasmic leech which he hadn’t felt in years, was back to suck the life from him.

He had a coat and a guitar in the bedroom; he’d have to go in and get it. He wondered if he should wait for John to fall asleep first, spare them both the agony of a conversation. By light of tomorrow the whole thing would be recast in vibrant Kodachrome, and it wouldn’t need to be talked about. If he could avoid the discussion  _ now... _

He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath and stepped toward the door.

“Stop dancin’ and come in,” John churled from inside the room.

Paul did as he was told. He found John sprawled on the narrow mattress beneath the window, his arm draped lazily over his eyes. 

“Well…” Paul started. “I’ll just be gettin’ my things, and…”

“You can stay.”

Paul looked over at him. “Hm?”

In response, John moved over, making room beside him on the mattress. “Buses’ll be running behind this late. Might as well.”

Paul had no way of knowing how late it actually was; it had been dark when they’d came up the steps, but because the winter sunset threw the whole evening into disarray, it could have been 6pm or 11pm, he’d never know. Not without a watch and he’d taken his off at the kitchen washbasin and forgotten to put it back on. So it was a choice between buying into John and not buying in. 

Paul bought in. 

There was no question. 

Slowly, he made his way over to the mattress, and as he crawled onto it—head to toe, as they’d always done—he felt John’s hand on his ankle.

“We don’t need to go tellin’ anyone about this.”

“Course not.”

“But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it.”

Paul paused. “Right,” he said. “I guess… I guess I did too…” 

He couldn’t be entirely sure, but he thought he felt John moving his thumb in small, slow circles against his Achilles tendon. 

The irony—of one weakness touching another—was not lost on Paul at all…


	4. D is for Dirty Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirty (adj.): salacious; obscene, smutty.  
Secret (noun.): something that is kept or meant to be kept unknown or unseen by others.

John was certain that, for the foreseeable future anyway, he would develop a hard-on anytime he saw an egg timer. And he was equally certain that he would blame Paul for it, too, because it had been his idea to use it in the first place.

The three-minute hourglass (_Is that what you call it?_ John wondered. _Hardly an hourglass then, is it…)_ was made of wood, stained a dark brown and rubbed shiny in the places where it had been handled most over the years. The sand within the glass was white, fine, like dust more than any sand he’d ever seen. Maybe four inches tall, it was small enough to be concealed in a closed hand, which is exactly how Paul had nicked it from the Asher kitchen in advance of one of his late-night writing sessions. That’s the story he told John anyway — under the gun to abracadabra another record for the suits at EMI to go along with the movie that was in the works, and with three-minute songs being the goal, Paul took advantage of the challenge presented by the small kitchen appliance he’d set on top of the piano in the music room. And it had worked; the song he claimed to have started that night was pretty much perfect, as far as John was concerned anyway, and it had ended up on the album and featured prominently in the film too. So perhaps the little egg timer served its purpose well as early on as its first ever use.

It’s just that Paul never put it back afterwards. He carried it around with him almost everywhere, and he’d had it on him that blustery January night, after one of their Christmas shows, when he’d headed out to John and Cyn’s Knightsbridge flat for a nightcap and it had first dared them both: _You’ve got three minutes. Use it or lose it_.

The damn thing had become almost totemic; the sight of that stupid egg timer _alone_ was enough to fill John, toe to crown, with fluttery desire. _Fuck, a single egg—hard-boiled, soft-boiled, scrambled, poached, raw, doesn’t matter—is probably enough to do it now, son_, he thought ruefully, and he was partly right. But in truth, Paul would simply have to pull the thing from his pocket and no matter where they were—in an elevator, in the backseat of the car taking them from their hotel to the venue, hell, once he’d even done it after a press conference, in front of a room of reporters and TV cameras—John would be uncomfortably halfway there. And then, when they were finally alone together, and Paul flipped the thing over to start the infernally arousing countdown, well… all bets were off.

Oh, of course, at first they went over the time limit those first few times, because grains of falling sand meant nothing when it was Paul’s lips or Paul’s hands or Paul’s…

Well. You get the idea.

But eventually the game became half the fun. And on tour, when they were suffocating in hotel rooms, three minutes stolen in secret behind a closed bedroom door under the guise of “working out a verse” or “nailing down that chord progression”... those three minutes could be an eternity. Three minutes was _paradise_.

It fit neatly into the toe of their shoes when they packed their suitcases, in the palms of their hand when they moved from room to room, could be scooped into a drawer or tossed under a pillow at a moment’s notice if necessary. It was an innocuous little item, attracted no attention, and they hadn’t been caught once since they started using it to time their little indiscretions. It was their dirty little secret.

And now, here, in San Francisco or Seattle or Vancouver—_Where the hell are we anyway?_—Paul sat on the edge of the bed and, yeah, he had his guitar resting against his knee and a pen and paper on the mattress and there _was_ a song on there, to be sure; they _were _working. But with his left hand, those dextrous fingers, he was flip-flip-flipping that bloody egg timer, tapping it against his knee, probably without even knowing he was doing it.

John was about to blow.

“You about done with that then?”

Paul looked up, as if he’d forgotten there was someone else in the room with him at all. John felt his face flush as Paul looked down at the egg timer and stilled his hand, a smirk on his lips. “What, this?”

John could have smacked the smirk off the bass players lips. He could have done a lot more than that to the bass players lips.

He caught himself with a shake of his head and cleared his throat. “You know damn well—”

“Christ, Lennon,” Paul laughed. “If I didn’t know any better—”

“What?”

“Well I just… I thought you had it off on your own earlier,” he lilted with a coy wink. “A little post-kip solo session.”

John hated being teased. He bent his head, averting his gaze, and arched his fingers around the frets of his own guitar. “Piss off,” he said.

He didn’t pay anymore attention to Paul until he heard the all-too familiar _clink_ of the tiny wooden egg timer as he set it down on the nightstand. John’s eyes flicked up to see the tiny sand grains falling into the base of the hourglass. He flicked his gaze to Paul.

“Still feel that way?”

*

When all was said and done, about five egg timers worth had elapsed and they were each utterly spent, sprawled head-to-toe and diagonally across the hotel bedspread. John had the egg timer in his hand now; he was admiring the wood grains in the kind of lazy, post-coital way that one might trace bed linens with their fingertips as they fell asleep. He wondered what kind of wood it was, when it was made, where Mrs. Asher has bought it, what she’d do if she realized it not only had been taken from her pantry but that it was being used by her daughter’s live-in boyfriend to provide a time limit to the sexual escapades he had with his band mate…

“Always liked an hourglass figure,” Paul commented. “Never truly went in for the waifish birds.”

John lifted his head to peer at him, all the way down there by his feet. “You did?”

He nodded. “I mean, I’m not gonna turn ‘er away, you know, but—”

“A shag’s a shag, right?”

Paul brushed a hand along the top of John’s foot. “Not always.”

John smirked. “Ah yer soft.”

“Hardly.” He caught John’s heel in his and planted a soft kiss in the arch. “Okay maybe a little.”

“Such a romantic,” John murmured as he gently and unsuccessfully wrestled his ticklishness down. “I’ll kick you in the face if you keep that up, and then how’ll we explain it? You with a busted nose…”

One more kiss and Paul released him and sat up. “Good ol’ fashioned wrasslin’,” he said, affecting a Texan lilt as he found his shirt, tossed to the opposite side of the bed.

John pushed himself up on his elbows and watched as Paul got dressed. He slid the shirt up over one arm, then pushed the other through its sleeve, adjusting the shoulders so it sat comfortably. One by one, he threaded the small pearlized buttons through their holes, inching up his torso until he reached the collar. He left the top button casually undone, exposing the dip at the base of his throat, the notch of his collarbone. He fumbled with the cuffs; John chewed the inside of his lip.

“You hold on to that, okay?” Paul said as he finally secured the right cuff and moved on to the left.

John leaned forward and helped him fasten the button. “Keep what?”

Paul nodded to the egg timer; John had left it on the mattress, next to his own pants. “For next time.”

John leaned over and took it in his hand, flipped it over, and set it against Paul’s crooked knee. “It’s next time.”

Paul laughed and snatched it away. “Cor…” he said with a smirk. “Can’t be trusted.”

“Please sir, can I have it back sir, please sir?” John faux-begged, and when Paul didn’t give it up, he affected disaffection. “Fine by me. I can’t look at the thing without getting a hard-on. If I had to hold on to it, I mean, who knows what would happen? And how would I ever explain it to the Ashers?”

“Well I’d dare you to put it in your pocket but we don’t need you getting bothered before the show tonight,” he said. Instead, he leaned across and set it on the nightstand between their beds once more. “It can stay there until we get back.”

John put his hand on Paul’s thigh. “Round two?”

“If you’re up for it.”

John didn’t have to look down to know that Paul was, indeed, very much up for it. “I see _you_ are.”

Paul just shrugged, and after John leaned over and flipped the egg timer once more, he was very careful to absolutely break free every single one of the buttons on the front of Paul’s shirt, sending the little plastic pieces scattering everywhere, without a single care for who saw or heard.


End file.
